Swooning Over Al Gore

Oh, my gosh. I want this man to be my husband. GQ has an interview up with Al Gore and - sigh! - here is my favorite part:

What kind of freedom do you feel now that you didn’t feel when you were running?

You know my all time favorite Onion headline—you read The Onion?—sometime in the summer of 2001, the lead story on the front page had a picture of Tipper and me, and the headline was, “Gores Enjoying Best Sex of Their Lives.” And she said, “How did they know?”

Do you have any advice on keeping a marriage together?
I think basically Tipper is the key to it.

Really?
Yeah. Love is such a complicated force, I don’t have the words to speak intelligently about it. I don’t even want to try to universalize what feels true to me, because everybody’s different and—

Yeah, but you know what? A lot of people are real different. You’re devoted. People look at you two and you never wonder if there’s anything stupid going on. What is it about you two?
Well, I think that communicating clearly, and making intelligent decisions about the time that you set aside for one another, not time with you and your spouse and the entire family. That’s also very important, but it doesn’t count in that category of time you need for the relationship itself. Communicating clearly, emotionally, spiritually, intellectually. That’s just really important. And if you need help, get help.

Have you been to therapy?
We went in the aftermath of our son’s accident. We had family therapy. And you know, Tipper has a graduate degree in psychology, and she has had a fairly intensive psychiatric practice for 40 years—with one patient. I’m seriously not joking when I say the secret is mostly her. She’s just an amazing partner in life.

What’s the last really romantic thing you did for her?
I made her an iTunes list that communicated things that are important.

What was on it?
That’s too personal.

This man cannot possibly exist! Has anyone ever met Al Gore? Is he a real man or a just a computerized movie image?

On to matters of national importance:

So if you decide to run, do you think we would see the Al Gore from the movie? Or the Al Gore from 2000?

Well, I don’t plan to run. I don’t plan to run. And I don’t expect to run.

How many times a day does somebody ask you this?
Well, I’m doing a lot of interviews and it’s on the list of questions. For every one of them. And I appreciate that. I appreciate that people think enough of me still in that world to ask that question. It’s true that I haven’t, uh, gotten to the point where I am willing to completely rule it out for all time. But, that is really more a matter of the internal shifting of gears. I’m not making plans to run again.

But you’re not ruling it out?
Uh… no. [smiles]

Run, Al, run!

There is a lot more great stuff in this interview, so I recommend reading the whole thing. He is funny. VERY funny! And, what he has to say about Iraq is interesting (see Al Gore get angry!). The George Bush lines he gets off are hysterical. This, for instance:

What’s the nicest thing you can say about George Bush?

He made a terrific appointment of Ben Bernanke as chairman of the Federal Reserve.

Ok, Is there a second best thing?
I can’t think of another one, actually.

Also, there is a lot on Inconvenient Truth, but the stuff about him and Tipper - I'm crazy about him for that!